Don't Take the Black Pill (Text Adaptation)

Don't Take the Black Pill (Text Adaptation) This is a blog post version of the talk I delivered at Software Should Work 2026. Shoutouts to Isaac Van Doren for running such a delightful conference and nailing it first try, and for infecting us all with his charming enthusiasm for Columbia, Missouri. Part 1: The Pill When I gave this talk, I warmed up the crowd by asking the audience who liked the 1999 film The Matrix. Roughly half raised their hands. But the kicker was the followup question, "who has never seen this movie?". 10 brave youngsters raised thair hands to audible gasps. In this movie, there's an iconic moment where our hero, Ted "Theodore" Logan, is presented with two choices, the red pill or the blue pill. The question is essentially "Do you want to know an uncomfortable truth?"; the blue pill means "no" and the red pill means "yes". To the audience, the answer is obvious. If the main character chose blue, the credits would roll before anything happened. But the metaphor is…